


Shadows of a Lost World

by Tarlan



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Community: trope_bingo, Light Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-29
Updated: 2016-10-29
Packaged: 2018-08-27 15:23:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,049
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8406865
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tarlan/pseuds/Tarlan
Summary: Rick and Daryl take shelter for the night.





	

**Author's Note:**

> For **Trope Bingo** Round 7: haunted house

When Rick was a kid he'd started out scared of the old McLaren place up on the hill just on the outskirts of the town. It had been falling to pieces long before the old man died and by the time Rick was an adventurous ten-year-old, it was considered a health and safety risk, all boarded up, and people had started telling stories of seeing strange lights and hearing weird sounds coming from there. His mother believed the place was haunted, telling him stories of people entering the house never to be seen again. Looking back she was probably just trying to spook him into staying away, but it didn't stop his small gang of friends from double-daring each other to stand on the rotting planks on the porch and knock twice on the boarded door. Each subsequent dare got a little harder, a little darker, and when it was Rick's turn he was dared to crawl through the rotted wood at the base of the door and enter the house.

He'd never been so scared in his life, but he refused to back down and let Shane be the leader of their gang.

The boards creaked under his weight as he edged inside the house, wishing he had more than the meager slants of light bleeding through cracks and holes to light up the interior. It was dark and everything had a thick layer of dust, coating his knees and elbows and making him cough. Once inside he stood up with his back to the door, heart racing when he thought he caught movement in the deeper shadows by the rickety staircase. Even as a kid he knew it was just his mind playing tricks on him and yet he felt the hairs stand up at the back of his neck, his overactive imagination creating monsters lying in wait for him, ready to eat him. Ghosts and vampires, demons and zombies.

Not real, he told himself over and over. Not real.

When he was eighteen and new into the Sheriff's department as a deputy, he went back to the old McLaren place on a hunch while out looking for some boys reported missing. He heard their cries as he approached the well-rotted porch, cussing under his breath as the planks creaked ominously beneath his adult weight. Although tempted to crawl inside, he took a crowbar to the planks boarding the door. They fell away easily, having decayed over the years. Rick made his way inside carefully and found the boys trapped under the stairs, their dirty, tear-streaked faces looking up at him, so pale and death-like in the surrounding shadows. He reckoned they must have tried climbing the stairs to the upper floor and the steps had crumbled beneath their weight. Fortunately they were scared but unharmed, and he pulled them out, giving them a ride home in the back of his police vehicle as he took them back to their worried parents.

They bulldozed the house soon after and built a small shopping mall on the land but the stories of the old McLaren place were ingrained into the minds of the locals, and he was regularly called out there by the night security guards hearing strange noises and catching movement in the shadows. Usually it was kids who'd hidden away until the place was locked up so they could have a little fun but sometimes he could find no explanation, putting it down to overactive imaginations.

The zombie apocalypse changed everything.

Rick had lost count of how many times his small group of survivors had broken into some dilapidated farmhouse or even places that had once been someone's pleasant suburban home. The heavy scent of decay, of rotting wood, mildew and mold, was already cloying the air, and a layer of dust covered everything. Remnants of happier times hung askew on walls or stood on shelves, pictures of smiling faces providing a stark reminder of the world they had lost. Before they settled down for the night they would check every room carefully for any mindless, ravenous monsters rotting away inside the sealed house. So many had committed suicide in the beginning, downing pills with alcohol, unaware at the time that only massive trauma to the brain could promise them true death.

Years earlier they'd lost Tyreese to the undead lying in wait behind closed doors.

Today it was just him and Daryl, caught out after a run for provisions went south, leaving them with a broken-down car. With night falling it wasn't safe to stay out in the open so they'd headed for this old house on the outskirts of what must have once been a thriving small town. They checked through each room carefully before settling down in what had to be the family room judging by the dust and cobweb covered photos lined up on the shelf. This house wasn't as old as the McLaren place from his childhood, but it had the same feel of decay; the same heavy air and shadows playing tricks on the eye, haunted by ghosts from a lost world. It felt as if more than a lifetime separated him from the small boy who had once played dare with his friends, for then this had been a creepy house full of unimaginable terror, and now it was a refuge from the real monsters outside the door. 

As there was no way for anything living or undead to get into the house without making a noise they settled down together for warmth, foregoing a fire. After years spent surviving from one day to the next, he no longer had any prejudice over color of skin or gender. There was just the living - the warm, breathing man lying quietly in his arms - and the rest were the dead and the undead. He leaned in and Daryl turned his face, sharing a soft kiss, reaffirming the bond between them that went beyond friendship, beyond brothers-in-arms... beyond brothers. Daryl was everything to him now, as important as Carl and Judith... loved.

"We'll check the neighborhood tomorrow," Rick whispered. "See if there's a car hidden away in a garage untouched."

Daryl nodded and a comfortable silence lengthened as they both fell asleep, letting the shadows keep them safe for another day.

END  
 


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